Immortals | ✓

07 | aethera

━━ αθάνατοι ━━

THE first place that ever came remotely close to being called home in my mind was the orphanage where I was left soon after my birth. It was an aged building, with high ceilings and creaking wooden floors. Stone walls of it were wrapped in poison ivy in parts and when it rained, petrichor invaded your senses at all times. 

As surreal as it seemed, the reality of living there was far from it. 

Beautiful places hold haunting secrets too and my first home wasn't devoid of them. There were rumours that years ago when it was someone else's residence and not an orphanage built on donated land, the lady who lived with her new husband there had been attacked and killed by an animal in its gardens. Some said it wasn't an animal at all that tore her limbs apart, but that her husband had killed her with his bare hands, that he was, behind closed doors, a mad, psychotic man. 

None of us knew the truth, but the story haunted us nevertheless. 

We didn't have a curfew to live by. No one on the staff cared enough for it. Mrs Alice had two simple rules. If you were over sixteen, you needed to be inside the gates by ten at night. 

The second rule applied to the under-sixteen lot. We could play in the garden for as long as we wanted in the evening but when the lights of the dining hall were switched on, we had to be inside within five minutes or we slept without dinner in the empty room at the edge of the corridor. Every night, Mrs Alice, like a ritual would start from the patio and make her way to the dining hall, switching each light on for the evening, and the kids who played outside would rile up in anticipation. The anxiety would increase with each switch that was switched on and most would give up even before she made it to the dining hall.

It was a good trick and it surely worked. No one had the guts to wait until she made it to the end and her work was done. 

No screaming, no shouting, just a non-verbal threat of being left hungry and alone in the faraway room. 

I never felt what they felt. The excitement and fear, anticipation and apprehension of failing to reach before the warning light. I never felt the panic of it all. Because I wasn't in the gardens playing. I was on the top floor, awaiting the dinner bell and reading and watching them rush inside, afraid to be late and I would bask in the feeling that I never had to feel what they had felt.  

Tonight feels like karma slapping me back in the face for it. 

Even Art's hand cannot shake this feeling off of me. The driveway is excruciatingly long and as we walk closer, I suffocate with anxiety more. 

Someone is inside. I don't know who, I haven't seen a single silhouette or face yet. But like a haunting reminder of the past, the lights of the aged mansion light up, one room at a time, starting from the top floor, down to the last. 

I try to shift my focus, and I try to think less of the past but the future ahead doesn't seem very calming too. Finally, I shift my focus to something else altogether, something that may calm me after all. 

"There's still time to turn back, you know?" I whisper, looking at Art but his tensed face doesn't provide me much peace. 

"And exactly where do we go back after turning back?" I don't like his rational side. 

"I don't know, lay low somewhere nearby. That inn seemed nice. We can keep an eye on the people who live here, ask around, maybe come back in the morning," I mumble and suddenly the lack of research on our part seems to bite back. We should have been patient, we should have waited. 

In the excitement of finally having answers, Art and I forgot what it would mean if this was the wrong place to be. If this was unsafe too. What if those who awaited inside weren't the ones with answers but the ones we were supposed to stay away from? Did we rush into this?